The importance of data analytics continues to grow with respect to sports. With greater access to information comes greater understanding of the particular sport. Some sports, such as baseball, have heavily developed datasets and accompanying data analytics. Other sports, such as tennis, are still developing in terms of a data collection and analysis. Because of the nuanced nature of the sport, tennis does not provide a rich dataset that is easily ascertainable by a spectator. In order to obtain detailed statistics such as serve speed, ball placement, ball trajectory, player movement, and other similar aspects, expensive equipment is typically required.
While expensive equipment may be available for professional players, these systems are unavailable to the vast majority of tennis players. For example, current “home” systems for tennis analytics require multiple (typically six) high-definition cameras mounted on permanent mounts and connected to a standalone computer (typically a kiosk) that is located near the court. Beyond the cost, this system has the obvious drawback of lacking portability. The system, once installed, can only be used on that particular court. If a player chooses to practice at a different court, the system is entirely useless.
On the other end of the analytics spectrum exist applications for use on a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or other handheld computer device (collectively referred to herein as a “mobile device”) that provide basic measurements of sports data. These systems are severely limited in their abilities. For example, with respect to applications that measure tennis serve speed, many rely on a user to manually press a button when the serve begins and ends. In a sport where the ball routinely travels at over 100 mph, relying on a human to manually indicate a start and end of a serve is simply not accurate enough to be useful. Another drawback of these types of systems is the requirement of manually inputting the location at which the ball bounces on the court. Yet another drawback is the need to manually input the distance between the mobile device and the service location of the ball. After all these manual inputs, most mobile-device based systems merely provide an estimate of serve speed. More detailed analytics are simply unavailable on a mobile-device based system at this point in time.
For at least these reasons, a need exists for a cost-effective, portable system that obtains and analyzes detailed sports information. The present disclosure provides a solution focusing primarily on the sport of tennis, but is also applicable to other sports. The solution is cost effective and portable, potentially using only a mobile device while providing a wide variety of statistics and data.
Other systems, methods, features and/or advantages will be or may become apparent to one with skill in the art upon examination of the following drawings and detailed description. It is intended that all such additional systems, methods, features and/or advantages be included within this description and be protected by the accompanying claims.